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January 12, 2012

Review: Girl Meets Boy

What do guys and girls really think? Twelve of the most dynamic and engaging YA authors writing today team up for this one-of-a-kind collection of "he said/she said" stories-he tells it from the guy's point of view, she tells it from the girl's. These are stories of love and heartbreak. There's the good-looking jock who falls for a dangerous girl, and the flipside, the toxic girl who never learned to be loved; the basketball star and the artistic (and shorter) boy she never knew she wanted; the gay boy looking for love online and the girl who could help make it happen. Each story in this unforgettable collection teaches us that relationships are complicated-because there are two sides to every story.

Girl Meets Boy sets out to accomplish the telling of a particular story from the point of view of both parties involved. Or at least, that was what I was expecting, and it’s what I was led to believe by the “Introduction” in the beginning of the book. Unfortunately I felt like it only accomplishes this part of the time.

In any given situation, I don’t believe there is ever a time where two people see things the exact same way. We all perceive things our own way, and we perceive each other our own way. The first set of stories in this book definitely show that, but after that point I think it kind of falls off. Being just a few pages each, I expected the stories to be a lot more intense, but they were very mild. At times the stories didn’t even overlap completely, and it just felt pointless. It was easy for me to forget these characters as I moved through the book because none of the stories had an impact on me personally. While it deals with a few serious issues, the chapters were very short so neither the characters or the stories felt as fleshed out as I would have liked them to be.

My disappointment may be in large part to the title and the cover. I was expecting a lot of romance and I just didn’t feel much of that. It felt like the book was going for a lot more than romance, but for me it just failed to deliver. It wasn’t an awful read by any means, but I think people who are more apt to enjoying the YA that is geared toward younger teens will enjoy this more than I did.